While running for Congress in 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was fond of saying “Women like me aren’t supposed to run for office.” It was the sounding note of her two-minute, campaign-defining ad, produced for $10,000 by democratic socialists in Detroit. By “a woman like me,” Ocasio-Cortez meant something specific: a woman born to the working class, in a place (the Bronx) where “your ZIP code determined your destiny,” a woman who had waited tables and tended bar, endured the gendered indignities of low-wage service work, and whose family was plunged into precarity by her father’s death. The work of governing the nation supposedly called for other credentials—often wealth, connections, and Ivy League degrees. As Brecht once wrote, “Those who lead the country into the abyss / Call ruling too difficult / For ordinary men.”
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Indeed, for some on the left, AOC’s rapid rise seemed almost too good to be true. Conditioned by history to anticipate defeat—to associate competence with compromise and marginality with virtue—the American left can be suspicious of victory itself. But as Freelander’s book reminds us, AOC is not merely a singular phenom; she is a product of her times. She owes her rise, and her convictions, to an array of political figures, factions, and forces, whose advent bodes well for the future of the left. “No person, no matter how dynamic, is the product only of their own will and talent,” Freelander writes. “All of us are pushed quietly along by thousands of unseen hands, are the product of society and circumstance, the place we were born into and the people we come to know.”
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While a group narrative has sociological merits, one wonders whether Freedlander’s choice to focus more on the supporting cast also stems from the fact that the star stopped returning his calls. ...
Does "tens" imply at least 20? I used to think so, but on The.Other.Message.Board anything above the unit took the plural. We say "Let's take the Ford. It has 1.1 gallons of gas in its tank, but the Chevy only has one gallon."
on Twitter: ""Our job is to legislate. Our job is to help people. Our job is to do as much as we can." - @AOC today (link)" / Twitter
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on Instagram: “Thank you @aoc for stopping by! Hope you enjoyed our “disrespectful” hot sauce! #queensinternationalnightmarket #blackowned #smallbusiness #jamaica